


Last One Standing

by blackredpanda



Category: Rockman Zero | Mega Man Zero
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Dreams, Exhaustion, Gen, Grief/Mourning, major character death in flashbacks, pre-Z2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 06:26:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17893226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackredpanda/pseuds/blackredpanda
Summary: Zero is alone in the wastes.Still he fights.Sometimes, he dreams...





	Last One Standing

There had been twenty of them at first.

Twenty Pantheons, with a Golem for support, made more than an ordinary scouting party. Zero didn't know what their objective was, but odds were that they were hunting some Reploids who had been labelled Maverick and were now trying to scrape by in the wastes. So he ignited his sabre and charged.

Five Pantheons fell in ten pieces before they could react. Then the plasma bullets and lasers flew in from every direction. While the other troops tried to fan out and flank him, he weaved through the storm of gunfire and stayed on the outside, hacking and slashing and shooting his way through.

He'd done this, and more, hundreds of times by now, and that was without taking his legends into account.

That didn't mean it was easy.

Every twist and turn he made tore open one of the thousand weak spots and microfractures riddling his systems – the badly-healed traces of past battles – and fleeting pains like needles would lance through his body. Every cut with his sabre was just a bit clumsier than the last – every landing a bit heavier – every dodge, a bit narrower.

Three – then two – then the last Pantheon collapsed, and he whirled round to face the Golem. This model had beam cannons for hands, three on each side. Now the tips of each cannon glowed and crackled with green plasma as they trained themselves on him. He dashed forward, hoping to get inside their angle and close with the Golem before they fired.

Too slow.

One of the beams whistled alongside him and raked his upper arm, searing away his exoskeleton and exposing the circuits beneath to its raw heat. Zero bit back a cry of pain. There would be time for that after the Golem was defeated. He fired his dash thrusters again and jumped, scrambling up over the vents on the Golem's chest. Then, before the Golem could retaliate, he hacked and stabbed at its head until its armour melted and gave way to his blade, and his sabre sank to the hilt in the Golem's processors.

Zero deactivated his sabre and tumbled clear of the Golem. Without the signal to keep its thrusters active, the Golem fell with a resounding crash that rattled Zero's whole frame as he lay on the ground.

The smell – the taste – of oil hung in a heavy cloud over Zero. He was soaked with the Pantheons' dark red coolant, and it was baking on his metal skin in the desert sun. But all was quiet. He drew his sabre once more, planted it in the ground, and pulled himself to his feet with his good arm, ignoring the squeaks and cracks of all his motors and joints.

He was the last one standing. As always.

It took him a while to find his cloak. A small mercy, he thought, that the fight had not brought him too far away from where he'd cast it off. He'd taken the cloak off a Reploid corpse which Condoroids had been picking for scrap metal, and if he lost it, he wasn't sure if he would find another. The cloak would have impeded his movements in battle, but between battles, it gave his injuries a modicum of protection from the ever-present sand while they healed.

Healing with one's auto-repair alone required energy. He dug through the pieces of Pantheon littering the ground, staining his hands darker with another layer of coolant. Whenever he found an energy tank that hadn't drained, he tore it out, opened it with his teeth, and drank down the fuel, being careful not to spill a single drop.

He found three in total. It wasn't enough. It was never enough.

He had to move on. Other patrols might have been summoned to this location. So he stood up once more, and put one foot in front of the other – then the other foot – then again, and again, and slowly the remains of the Pantheons and the Golem shrank further and further away.

* * *

 

Pantheons surround him, Pantheon Hunters and Pantheon Aces and new and bizarre kinds, with Golems at their rear. Zero draws his sabre and sweeps all of them away with a single swing, and he is alone.

***

He sees someone he knows. This is X, with his warm emerald eyes. But he is pinned in an energy trap, and some monstrous purple armour is closing in to finish him off.

Zero cannot let that happen. He pounces, tackles the armour, and for a moment the world is all flames and light and a roaring noise.

He knows he is dying. The one in purple still stands, mocking. But he is smaller than he was before.

X is stunned.

Then Zero sees – feels – a fire kindling in X; he will fight, he will burn, because he wants peace, so his friends will not die.

X incinerates the one in purple with a raging blue fire from his buster. Then he cradles what is left of Zero in his arms, his eyes awash with tears.

Zero wishes, more than anything, that he could go with X – but he can't.

X lays his broken body down, and he is left in the darkness.

***

Opal eyes stare up at Zero from a face framed in long, flowing brown hair. She smiles. His hands are clasped around hers, and yet she is slipping from him like sand through his fingers.

"I wanted... to live in a world where only Reploids exist... with you..."

He's holding on, but she falls ever away from him, and he remains.

***

A sharp, youthful face, this one. His bright green eyes contrast the dark scars over his nose. There is still a spark in those eyes, but the light is distant, shining dimly through mists of grief.

"I'm sure they'll figure out this virus stuff. So wake up soon, okay? I can't promise I'll leave any for you."

He presses his hands to the transparent wall between them, and it seems to Zero that he should say something back.

He can't speak.

***

There is a threat he needs to fight, and so he wakes. X is there. Someone is missing. Many someones are missing. They should be here. But wherever he turns, there they are not.

Where are they?

"I'm sorry. We're the only ones left."

X’s voice is heavy with sorrow, and they both sink deep into water black as night.

***

The wall between them is clear as water, yet unyielding as iron beneath X's thundering fists.

"Stop the sealing process! Please, stop it!"

Waves of despair slam into him, wash over him, around him.

He can't feel them. He's too far gone.

***

X lays his hand on his shoulder and meets his gaze. Once brilliant emeralds, his eyes are fading now, worn away by the sights of so many years of war.

"You did what you had to do," X says, with the faintest traces of his old warmth, like dying embers. "As I did. I will have peace."

At those words, X's eyes grow cold, unfeeling as stone – utterly _wrong_ – and he crumbles away in so much black dust.

The cold remains.

* * *

Zero started, and his grip tightened on his sabre. He must have been sleeping. More and more often now, his power cells would drain to critical and force him to shut down before he was aware of it. And more and more often, he would dream of... people.

He slowly traced the edges of his sabre with his fingers. He hadn't always fought alone. That much he knew.

But he supposed those people had needed to, once – until they had been scoured away by the ravages of war.

They were all gone now, even from his memory.

He was the last.

But he had made a promise.

If he was the only one left to fight, then fight he would.

In the distance, he spotted an all-too-familiar mass of blue, moving towards a grey, featureless tower that he recognised as a Pantheon garrison.

Slowly, he pushed himself to his feet, grinding his teeth at the ache in his arm. He wrapped his cloak once more around himself and set off.

**Author's Note:**

> Sealing timeline is worst timeline.  
> Constructive criticism welcome.


End file.
